Facebook purges 800 political spam Pages, accounts from its platform

In its latest salvo against misleading political spam accounts, Facebook announced Thursday that it had removed 559 Pages and 251 accounts from its platform for creating inauthentic activity motivated by profit.

Facebook removed Pages, groups and accounts that that were found to be created solely to stir up political debate from the U.S., Middle East, Russia and the U.K.

Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook head of cybersecurity policy, and product manager Oscar Rodriguez said money was the primary motivator for these accounts.

“The people behind (the spam) create networks of Pages using fake accounts or multiple accounts with the same names. They post clickbait posts on these Pages to drive people to websites that are entirely separate from Facebook and seem legitimate, but are actually ad farms,” Gleicher and Rodriguez said.